The next day, for some reason, I didn’t wake up till it was light outside. I felt the sunlight so strongly on my eyelids that I opened them, and saw Kinoko-san staring at me from one side. Startled, I tried to explain, “I’m so sorry, but I really can’t lend you my ear. I don’t have it any more, because they tricked me, and I never got it back.” Kinoko-san smiled weakly and said, “Oh, my dear. How lamendacious, to lose your ear.”
Apparently she was looking at where my ear used to be. I wondered how it looked. I couldn’t see it because it was just out of my line of sight, but my ear really seemed to have been cut off. And it was Kinoko-san, not me, who was supposed to have had the operation. All last night I had surrendered to writhing creatures. Over and over again they had said to me, “We’re coming with a knife, we’re coming to get you, we’re coming for an ear.” I said, “I’ll take a permanent marker and write protective poems on my ears.” “Then we’ll take your liver,” they said. I was being oppressed by formless creatures. They clung to me on all sides and I couldn’t shake them off. But I had never seen or felt my own liver, so I thought that maybe I would be fine without it. How pathetic, I thought, a person who’d never seen her own inner organs.
“My dear, have you never seen yourself?” Kinoko-san asked, laughing lightly. Dumbfounded, I replied evasively, “These days I don’t even look in the mirror any more.” “Well now, all you need is a hand mirror,” Kinoko-san said, this time laughing like wind chimes. I held up my hand behind my neck, as if my nape would be reflected in my palm. Kinoko-san said, “You only look at your upper parts, don’t you.” Taken aback, I rummaged in the drawers for a hand mirror. I couldn’t find one, so, relieved, I started looking for something I could use to change the subject. I used to have such an assortment of objects it was exhausting to organize them. What’s funny is if now somebody asks me, “What objects, for instance?” I wouldn’t be able to answer. I think they were in general useful things. Now I didn’t have anything. What I finally found was a moldy wallet. It appeared to have some change inside, but I was too lazy to open it.
“My dear, have you really never looked at yourself?” Kinoko-san insisted. I couldn’t very well ignore her, so I looked at her face and saw that her cheeks were flushed pink and her lips were burning. My answer was, “I understand. Please help me.” But that night, and the next, no help arrived. I grew irritated at myself for just waiting. A woman who waits is too passive. After all, this wasn’t a 1930s ballad. Thinking I would do something decisive at least inside my mouth, I picked up my toothbrush. With a Vivaldi violin concerto racing through my head, I attempted to move the toothbrush at a tremendous pace. My fingers stumbled over themselves, and it didn’t go well. Giving up, I banged on the wall with my hand, which made quite a noise. But still I couldn’t get out. I was trapped. Blood was throbbing in my temples. “What’s the matter?” A worried face; I couldn’t remember whose. “Such a noise, whatever is the matter?” She was speaking politely. As long as they are polite, I don’t get very angry no matter what they say. “Such a noise? Surely you disheard,” I replied, only my tongue stumbled over the words and I said “disheardened.” “Now please stop, it’s time for your meal.”
“I’m simply afflailed.” “So busy.” “Just didn’t manage.” “Still, these days it does seem as if.” When talking to a large company over dinner, one is not so much looking for things to say as walking along a narrow road trying not to touch things one shouldn’t and somehow making one’s way forward. If one says something wrong, the listener’s mucous membranes are injured. The listener groans and opens his eyes wide. When one gets tired of seeing that, one clams up. When spoken to, one doesn’t answer. One wishes, then, to be alone with Kinoko-san. One needn’t watch one’s words with Kinoko-san. On the other hand, one never knows what she will say next. “It twitches, you know. So interesting,” she says, laughing. “But isn’t it a little frightening?” I ask. “Oh no, not at all. After all, it’s one’s own, isn’t it.” “But what if somebody sees you?” “I don’t fret about such things any more.” “Isn’t it a little frightening, it being for instance wet and all?” “Come now. It’s not the least bit frightening. On a rainy day even the window is wet, after all.”
Kinoko-san smelled different all at once. It turned out someone had made her a present of a Chanel perfume called Egoïste. “What a lovely scent, you’ve become a misrecognizable beauty,” I said. Kinoko-san laughed and gave me a look. When a person smells different, it’s as if she’s altogether a stranger, and one becomes a little shy. “It was a gift, you see, from a person I did something for.” It seemed tactless to ask what the something was. She must have understood how I felt, since she added, “Diapers to bath, everything.” I understood then that she was speaking of her son.
This so-called son, I must add, appeared only in conversation, and never in person. At dusk sometimes, when Kinoko-san’s eyes lost their focus and stared into space, I would think, “She’s thinking about him,” and I would stare into space, too. I would see countless amoebas drifting in the air. They might have been nothing but the dust that plays in the liquid surrounding the eyeball. “Was there a visit?” I asked, but Kinoko-san didn’t answer. So I reached over to the dry slice of bread on Kinoko-san’s plate, and quickly pushed it into my mouth. On Sundays we had bread. At first I thought it was there to represent Christ's body, but it turned out that on Sundays the cook had the day off and wasn’t there to cook the rice, so there was bread instead.
At dawn on Monday, when scattered footsteps began to disturb the ear’s horizon, Kinoko-san suddenly said something like, “Isn’t it strange to say ‘packaged bread.’ Isn’t bread itself a kind of package?” I ignored her. At such times if I start to answer her, the other people might think I am at her level, and that would be frightening. The staff turned Kinoko-san’s body over like a sheet of paper and said accusingly, “You didn’t try the bread. There is no excretion, which suggests the bread wasn’t eaten. You must have thrown it away somewhere.” Kinoko-san only blinked her eyes with a puzzled air and said nothing. Three of them came over and tapped her back. A cloud of dust rose and Kinoko-san’s back turned white. Kinoko-san narrowed her eyes with a look of great contentment, but I couldn’t breathe with all the dust and began to cough. There was a great commotion, “Where’s the bread? The bread? The bread?” One of them was bending over with a twisted neck to look under the bed. Another checked the window locks. O bread, o bread, why hast thou forsaken me?
The morning confusion subsided, and the staff disappeared. Somewhere a telephone is ringing. There is no receiver so I can’t take the call. The people here are quite malicious, having a phone specially made with no receiver. Still, it’s better than nothing. Even if you can’t take the call, a call is still a call. “It’s ringing!” I think, and my upper body grows warm. Apparently there are still people who call me. After a while the telephone falls silent, without my having touched it. Then Kinoko-san’s telephone begins to ring. I tap Kinoko-san’s back, saying, “It’s ringing, it’s ringing.” Kinoko-san pretends not to notice. She seems to want me to think she gets so many phone calls she needn’t answer every one. I don’t mind, but she’s certain to regret it if she doesn’t pick up out of pride, just when someone is trying to call. Perhaps in hell there is no telephone, and even if there is one, maybe no one will try to call. “They’re calling, don’t you hear?” I tap harder. Suddenly, someone pins my arms from behind. “Stop it. What are you thinking? You shouldn’t hit people.” Some juvenile delinquent girls are holding me back and shouting. These people don’t like to see me keeping company with Kinoko-san, so every now and then they blow up. They are imprisoned by jealousy, envy and spite, so they quite often misunderstand one’s actions. They don’t have the ears to hear my explanations. To some extent, one has to forgive them on account of their youth, but I can’t forgive people who use their youth as an excuse to oppress others. I see a palm in front of my eyes, so I bite it as hard as I can. My teeth impose themselves between thin bones set together like the sticks of a fan. There is a scream, and the hand flies up with amazing force, jerking my mouth along with it so that my jaw is almost dislocated, and after that I don’t remember anything.